Anyway, here is the e-mail I got from D:

just wanted to pass on some information about the Grant Davis , Ghost Bike. It is back, ADOT, placed it in almost the same spot on North Oracle. Some noticed it was gone and I explained why. Many are happy it has returned. Kudos to ADOT, a very nice thing they did.

–Erik Ryberg

Hi Erik,
Just wondered if you could post info on the ghost bike I just got up for Drake
Okusako. Here’s a blip if you want to put it on the blog. Thanks – S

Yet another ghost bike is up to remind people to drive safely and watch for bikers
at the site where Randolph boy’s soccer coach, Drake Okusako was killed by a
reckless driver one year ago today. Coach Oke collected soccer medals. If you have
any old soccer medals you can donate, please bring them to the site and they will be
glued onto the memorial just south of Broadway on the west side of Alvernon (in
front of the Reffkin Tennis Center).

More about Okusako here.

I appreciated that call a lot.

It seems the bike was inadvertently installed inside some kind of federally-mandated safety zone and ADOT was compelled to move it, but in the process of moving it they broke the frame. So, they brought it back to their shop for repairs! (This just goes to show what a good a job the installer of this ghost bike did to ensure it didn’t get stolen.)

They will re-install it at a nearby location that does not conflict with their standards.

–Erik Ryberg

This story is awful in every way. (Link to story on Drunkcyclist, not always completely SFW). See more about the memorial ride here, including lots of photos.

–EBR

The Arizona Daily Star has a depressing, simple-minded editorial about the Third Street bike enforcement that is occurring.

They say:

The recent, albeit limited, crackdown of cyclists who ignore the traffic rules of the road is a positive move, not because cyclists aren’t welcome in Tucson, but because our community is bicycle-friendly and keeping everyone safe is paramount.

If keeping everyone safe is paramount, why is there no enforcement of the three-foot rule? The vast majority of cycling fatalities in Tucson occur because drivers hit cyclists from behind, often while the cyclist is in a bike lane. I am sure it has happened, but I can’t recall a single recent incident of a cyclist being killed from running a stop sign, and certainly not a stop sign on the Third Street bikeway.

And if keeping everyone safe is paramount, why the insanely dangerous Fourth Avenue underpass? As I told Channel Four News the other day, and as I have stated in this blog: we spent 46 million dollars on that underpass. We can spend a little more and make it safe for cyclists. Will we? Or will we wait for another hit-from-behind fatality on Broadway as a cyclist attempts to merge across those lanes to reach the underpass?

I have no problem with citing cyclists who literally blow through stop signs, and I am well aware that college kids, especially newly minted ones, can ride like idiots. Tickets might actually help some of them. But what about also targeting the behavior that is actually killing cyclists?

This passage really got me:

“Ghost bikes,” or bikes painted white and mounted near a road to mark where a rider was killed, can be found throughout the city, sad reminders of what can happen when people don’t pay attention to each other on the road.

It would be wonderful if bicyclists and pedestrians on and around the UA campus would decide on their own to obey traffic laws and stop at stop signs, yield when necessary and look before they go plunging into the road.

The Star is correct that these memorials can be found throughout the city. I have personally installed many of them, and all were for people who were killed by drunk, angry, speeding, or inattentive drivers. People who never had a chance, and who were obeying traffic laws.

Anyway, Bob Mionske has said it all particularly well here.

The Star has it backwards. If the City wants to encourage bicycling, as it says, then it will make the Third Street bikeway easier, not harder, to traverse (I very much doubt that removing that stop sign–making the intersection a two-way, instead of four-way stop–would make things any more dangerous for cyclists or motorists).

And if TPD wants to improve the safety of cyclists it will start following up on assaults and move at least some of its enforcement resources towards targeting the motor-vehicle violations that keep killing cyclists, instead of focusing only on the violations that annoy drivers.

–Erik Ryberg

One Memorial Bike Taken From DuPont Circle, 22 More Appear
By Ashley Halsey III
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 10, 2009; 5:01 PM

Even in a city so thick with monuments that only tourists notice the big ones and pigeons get the rest, it was hard to miss the stark white bicycle chained to a lightpost just north of DuPont Circle.

From a distance, passersby were drawn by the bouquets of flowers so often perched in its basket or left beside its wheels. As they neared, they saw the sign: Cyclist Struck Here. And as they leaned close, they saw messages written on the saddle and the frame: “We love you Alice,” and “You made the best cookies.”

For more than a year, the memorial to Alice Swanson stood at the corner of 20th and R streets, just a few feet from the spot where a garbage truck struck her down as she pedaled to work last July. Then, at the end of last month, the city cut the chain and moved it away.

On Thursday, the memory of Alice lived again. Twenty-two white bicycles appeared, commanding a piece of every lightpost at the intersection.

By late afternoon, they all remained, although the only one that had been chained was attached to the same post where the original stood.

–EBR

Friday, August 14, marks one year since Chuck was killed. We want to remember this day by decorating his Ghost Bike so that drivers will see it and be reminded to share the road. We are gathering at 5:30pm. The bike is located at the west entrance to Udahl Park on Tanque Verde Rd. Join us if you can.

Zoe and Teresa Nystrom

More on Charles here.

–Erik Ryberg

I was sent this photo today of a ghost bike that has appeared at the site where Allen Johnson was killed. I am told there still has been no citation issued to the driver, although she struck Johnson well within the bike lane.

–Erik Ryberg

As most of my readers know, Charles Nystrom was killed while riding his bicycle on Tanque Verde Road last year. He was a retired Air Force pilot, a bicyclist, father of two daughters, and was working as a school teacher at the time of his death.

I never met him, but he sounds like the kind of person anyone would be proud to know.

The evidence is pretty strong that he was riding his bike eastbound and merging across Tanque Verde in order to turn left (north) where he was to meet his family for dinner at Zona 54 Restaurant. He had taken the curb lane (that’s the far right lane) and he was merging into the middle lane, which was free of traffic at the time he merged. But Faith Quick, a 20-year old woman and, apparently, frequent drug user, was impatient with the car in front of her that had slowed to let Charles merge. She did not see Charles.

Ms. Quick sped around the car in front of her and entered the middle lane at the same moment that Charles did. She hit him from behind in her pickup, and ran over him. He died at the scene, in the arms of a bystander, while asking the bystander to call his wife.

Ms. Quick plead guilty this morning in Tucson City Court to one count of misdemeanor DUI, for being under the influence of marijuana while driving. She received a sentence of five days in jail and one year of probation.

Just prior to the proceeding, Judge Cranshaw pointedly asked the prosecutor what this case, which involved a fatality, was even doing in Tucson City Court. Why was this not charged as a felony? The answer: Pima County refused to take the case, based on the police report, which concluded that Charles was at fault in this accident. The Nystrom family and I have all but begged Pima County to accept this case for prosecution, but they refused to do so, and pointed to the police report to support their position that Charles was at fault.

The police report takes every opportunity to suggest that Charles Nystrom at best rode his bicycle erratically into traffic, and at worst threw himself into traffic from the curb. It gives little credence to the statements of the one witness who saw the accident clearly, and the only witness who saw the entire event. Instead it relies on badly scattered recollections of a few witnesses who did not see the event directly, but only pieces of it.

Adding to the insult was the media response. Take this passage from the Arizona Star article:

The driver of the truck — a 20-year-old woman — was changing from the curb lane to the median lane and did not see Nystrom as he tried to cross East Tanque Verde Road, Pacheco said.

It appears that Nystrom failed to yield to the truck, he said. No citations have been issued.

Nystrom failed to yield to a truck that struck him from behind? Since when do you have an obligation to yield to people behind you?

It is my strong suspicion that if Charles Nystrom had been in a car when he was rear-ended, the entire investigation would have been different, and there would be little doubt who was at fault. But he was on a bicycle, and that makes all the difference.

At the sentencing hearing today Charles’s widow, Teresa Nystrom, spoke of her hope that Ms. Quick, so young, will take this opportunity to reflect on the loss she has caused to this family, and adjust her behavior. Mrs. Nystrom spoke very eloquently about her loss, and about her hopes for Ms. Quick. She stated that she knew Ms. Quick had not set out to kill anyone that day, but that her behavior was not acceptable in this community, and had costs that were borne far more heavily by Charles’s two daughters, his brother, his grandchild, his students, and his widow than by Ms. Quick and her five day sentence at the Pima County Jail.

Please, everyone, we are so fragile out there! Those of you in cars, pay attention! There are others on the road, and you have a duty to look out for them. If a driver slows in front of you, it is most likely for a reason, and someone’s life may be depending on you to act courteously and cautiously. And those of you on your bikes have duties too: think of the pain you will cause your families if you are hurt or killed, and use lights, helmets, and good sense when you ride.

–Erik Ryberg

Now according to an email I just received, the Patti Lopez bike has been vandalized, but already repaired.

From: RK

I am glad to report that the Ghost Bike For Patti Lopez has been restored in place on CMO.DE LA TIERRA after having been vandalized about ten days ago . Patti’s father and family members refurbished and replaced the Ghost Bike today . It is a sad commentary on our society today that anyone would wish to destroy a memorial to a fine young woman and mother two, killed riding her bike

Thanks RK, the anonymous ghost bike installer, and the Lopez family for working to keep reminding motorists to be careful on the road.

Also — remember, if you want to make a ghost bike, BICAS will provide the bike for free.

–Erik Ryberg